things just ain't the same for gangstas

I haven't made as much this summer as I should have.
I haven't looked as much as I wanted to.
I haven't gone as many places as I could have.
I haven't done a lot of things.

But I have done a lot of thinking.

I can't stop thinking that the summer's over when there's really four more weeks! four whole weeks!
I can't stop thinking about books, about science, about art, about art and science, and about art books and science.
I can't stop thinking of ways  to fix it.
I can't stop thinking about this coming year and these coming years.
I can't stop thinking about things that could go wrong.

The Intellectuals-August Sander

thanks, photoslide.blogspot.com

I'm losing my edge (to better looking people, with better ideas, and more talent)

Yesterday, I spent the day at PS1 with a friend that just graduated from our art department. We talked a lot about what art we like, what we make, and the discrepancies between our work and current "trends". I think this is something that people often don't talk about--I know I feel uncomfortable with the topic at times-- but something that needs to be discussed. Some of the work I saw yesterday (I really thought) was awful. It was devoid of context, conversation, or interaction with the viewer.

The number of "Untitled" works was infinitely frustrating. Why should the viewer spend time with your piece if you don't give anything back? If you are going to line up some objects against a wall that have no apparent similarities or interactions the honest viewer will walk right by and lose interest. The dishonest viewer will tell their friends they love it, and refuse to give any reasons-- saying things like "isn't it obvious?" or "well clearly you just don't get it".

Maybe I just don't get it. 

But if they provided a title, however abstract, I would be much more willing to give my time to a piece and really interact with it, try and extract something from it, if they provided ANY sort of context.

Don't get me wrong, there were pieces I really liked and enjoyed, but I feel, for whatever reason, that I need to challenge and discuss things that bother me about "the art world", if only to selfishly work through my own feelings about it. However, as I discussed previously, I feel there is a lack of honesty or forthrightness that is troubling in our contemporary art society. It frustrates and alienates "the average (interested) viewer" and as someone who views art as a form of communication, I find it appalling.

On a brighter note: here are some contemporary works I like and think work successfully around these complaints. They're the ones, in my opinion, who do it right.

(thanks, wired.com)

Isabella Rossellini

Green Porno

(thanks, PBS)

Alfredo Jaar

Also check out the "Lights in the City" project from 1999 under Recent Projects

(thanks again, PBS)

Laylah Ali

Read her profile at Art21.

You looked like a swimmer

After a few twelve hour work days, this is my first chance to post about my trip to the MoMA and The American Folk Art Museum last Friday. As I meandered about and inundated myself with the act of looking (as opposed to seeing, which we do all the time) I did something out of the ordinary for me and my sketchbook: I wrote about it.

I feel compelled to share it with you, if only out of a desperate desire for more honesty and more transparency between artists about their work and their process and their thoughts and their inspirations. Here are mine:

"I'm not sure if I'm on the right track or if I'm light years behind. As an artist, I must take comfort in the inherent uniqueness of my work being that it comes from ME and I DID IT. The things I like in these great works overlap with things I love in my own. Logically, I know this is normal, and possibly even a good thing. Themes and stories and patterns that occur and reoccur in art and history are great -- standing the test of time indicates that the content deals with questions of humanity-- yet, I find myself wondering how I can compete with the likes of ERNST and JESS and DALI? With the bookmakers, printmakers, and drawing-based artists who have years of experience, time, funding, training, patronage, and practice?

YET I CONTINUE TO MAKE.

I take comfort in the inherent me-ness of my work. I take comfort in the practice itself. and I take comfort in the knowledge that great artists make crap too, sometimes."

Here are some pieces I enjoyed and wanted to share:
Mona Hatoum (medium: paper and hair)

Rivane Neuenschwander- I love this. The colors, the idea, everything.

MAX ERNST and a biology poster. one of my most surprising finds. and strangely encouraging. (as in, if he can take an actual biology poster and dissociate it from its content this much, then I can definitely use organic-inspired elements and not have them just be illustrative)

I would love to hear your thoughts.

(all photos from MoMA's website)

this is it

It's so good to be back in a lab again. The first few weeks in a new lab are always tough but nothing compares to that unbeatable rush of doing something for the first time, for seeing something new: the same feeling I had as a kid when I first pulled a worm out of the ground or when I learned why the sky was blue or the grass was green.

Today I spent far too long doing an extremely simple task: move 5 worms from one plate to another. But as I sat there and chased those guys around the plate with my little apparatus, I had some of time to think about the connections between my art and science. It's a topic I'm afraid of in a lot of ways. It's a topic that makes me question everything that I think about myself as an artist and as a person (what are we if not perception-ists?). There are times I don't know if my science influences my work, runs my work, or is my work. I don't know if I should even try and stop it any more. More importantly, I start questioning why I make and why I don't just observe. But I can't stop. and sometimes that in itself has to be enough. 

Here are some images that bring out this apprehension: they are some of the most beautiful images I've collected and ones that I come back to again and again.

DNA at metaphase (when you can see chromosomes most clearly. it's the way we all pictorially think of chromosomes: as little Xs) without the proteins that hold it together. So, all of those loops are DNA strands. The skeleton is what the DNA usually holds onto to look like an X.

C. elegans

  

cross sections of C. elegans (1mm worms)

National Anthem of Nowhere

Michael Kareken

I think these are gorgeous. The unnatural natural landscapes are both confronting and neutral, ordered and disordered. I wish I could see one in person.










I miss painting. It's been a whole season without acrylics or oils. Watercolors don't feel the same to me: it's a whole different process. I miss my superstitions and the physicality of it all. This week in the studio has been fantastic. Non-stop printing, only pausing to let the ink dry, and I'm really happy with the results so far but soon and very soon I'm jumping back into giant, fabulous, messy, squishy PAINT.

sugar on my tongue

I think too much about (my) art.

I worry that what I make looks like everything everyone else is making.
I worry that I'm not using the right medium.
I worry that what I'm conveying is too simple or too complex.
I feel like I'm cheating on science when it influences my art.



(Microbo, Andy Rohr, Blu)

This usually means it's time to take some time off to just make and look. (not think)

temecula sunrise

I thoroughly believe in doing things you don't like (especially as an artist) because they're usually good for you.

Honestly, nine times out of ten I don't like works done solely using illustrator/photoshop. But this piece by  Matei Apostolescu reminds me of things I've been thinking about.

been there done that messed around

I bought Tim Tams, an Australian biscuit (cookie), for my significantly-better-other-half for Valentines day/his birthday and we finally got around to trying the "Tim Tam Slam" last night.. (It's where you bite off the corners of the cookie, use it as a straw, then eat it as soon as the liquid hits your mouth, which makes the cookie literally melt as you're eating it) 

It's honestly delicious.

paper planes

sometimes I forget that paper is an object

 (White Hand -2007- and Down the River -2005- by Peter Callesen)

from minijetplanes.com

oh I believe in yesterday

tastesorangey

prettylittletheives

I'm now quite sure that what I'm attempting to communicate visually is nearly impossible to do successfully... but hopefully I'm getting closer. This weekend I started sewing onto paper again, and began to think about photographs, white, and all things that grow.

As of today, I've been thinking a lot about texture, thanks to pistachiopress' Rachael Hetzel who showed me some really interesting prints this evening. I hadn't even considered embossing the paper by hand. 

Lots to think about. On days like today I wish I could spend all of my time in the studio. and I'm still not sure if this is an "e-sketchbook" or something for general consumption. and I can't wait to start printing again. (but) there is so much to do.

temperature rising

I've been stuck at home, so I've been carving, carving, carving. For the first time ever I stabbed myself in the thumb... I blame it on Twin Peaks. (I know who killed Laura Palmer!) Now I have two blocks ready to print and a third on it's way.

 

walk it out

www.hipsterpuppies.tumblr.com

I printed again today, started carving my block, found this website, and it was >30F. What a great day.